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TwitPic was launched in 2008 by Noah Everett.[1] In an interview with Mixergy, Noah Everett revealed that he had been offered a price in the range of 10 million US dollars for his company but he declined the offer.[7] In 2011, Everett launched Heello, a service that also supports text posts and videos but is less dependent on Twitter. Twitpic's first app was released on 7 May 2012.[8]

On September 4, 2014, Twitpic announced that it would shut down on September 25, 2014, following trademark infringement threats by Twitter, Inc., threatening to revoke its access to the service's APIs if they do not withdraw their filings to trademark "Twitpic".[9] However, shortly afterward on September 18, 2014, TwitPic announced that it would not shut down, as it had been acquired by an unspecified company.[10] TwitPic followed up on October 16, 2014 with an update to their original announcement, stating that they could not reach an agreement, and were going to follow through with their shutdown on October 25, 2014.[9] On October 25, 2014, Twitpic announced that they had reached an agreement with Twitter to give them the Twitpic domain and photo archive.[11]

TwitPic could be used independently of Twitter as an image hosting website similar to Flickr. However, several characteristics made this site a companion for Twitter:

TwitPic uses usernames and passwords from Twitter

Comments to photographs are sent as reply tweets

TwitPic URLs are already short, making it unnecessary to use URL shortening

Anyone with a Twitter account was eligible to post pictures on the site. As of May 2011[update], Twitpic altered their terms of use, allowing them to distribute the photographs people have uploaded to their "Affiliates". However, Twitpic refused to state who these affiliates may be and what they gain by distributing the pictures. This triggered a public inquiry by users over the possibility of Twitpic publishing user content without compensation.[12] As a result, people began boycotting Twitpic and removing all of their images. Twitpic addressed these concerns in a blog post, claiming that the changes in the terms had been misinterpreted.[13]

Both the official Twitter for Android and Twitter for iPhone applications featured TwitPic as an option for sending pictures to Twitter. (Yfrog was another popular picture-sending option offered by both applications.)

According to a report by Sysomos, as of 30 May 2011[update], TwitPic was the leading third-party image hosting service for Twitter. Of the nearly 2.25 million daily image shares on Twitter, 45.7% of them came from TwitPic.[16] Twitter announced partnership with Photobucket to be the default photo sharing application on 1 June 2011, with the potential to significantly affect TwitPic's market share.

In January 2009, US Airways Flight 1549 experienced multiple bird strikes and had to be ditched in the Hudson River after takeoff from LaGuardia Airport in New York City. Janis Krums, passenger on one of the ferries who rushed to help took a picture of the downed plane as passengers were still evacuating, and tweeted it via TwitPic before traditional media arrived at the scene.[17][18] The TwitPic service crashed as thousands of people tried to access the photo at the same time.[19] TwitPic also crashed on April 1, 2009 as a result of the large number of photos (and people viewing these photos) being posted from the G20 protests in London.